Using Your Brain —for a CHANGE
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Woman – I want to ask about the "floaty" feeling that Lou reported when you first tried changing the position of the belief
Well, that kind of response tells me two things. One is that I've discovered a submodality change that really makes a profound difference in her experience. The other thing it tells me is that she doesn't yet have a new belief to put in its place. Have you ever had an experience that shattered an old belief, but you didn't have a new belief to put in its place? Some people drift in a haze for days before they can reorganize. That often happens to a person when she gets fired from a job, or a friend or relative dies. I once talked to a man whose college philosophy professor shattered a major belief of his. He said he dropped out and went around in a fog for over six months. I want to have a new belief all "waiting in the wings" before I permanently weaken the old belief.
Now let's come back to Lou, and do a little testing. Lou, is that new belief still there?
Lou: (She looks straight ahead and defocuses her eyes.) Yes. I keep checking to make sure. I have a hard time believing that it could be so easy to do.
What happens when you think of the old belief?
Lou: (She looks up to her left, and then smiles.) It looks kind of dried up now.
It's certainly not where it used to be. This is another way of checking what I've done, and of course I pay more attention to her nonverbal cues that to her words. Now we have a five–minute follow–up. (For information about a videotaped demonstration of this Belief Change Pattern, see Appendix IV.)
I want you all to try out this pattern in groups of three. One of you will be programmer, one will be client, and one will be an observer/consultant. I'll review all the steps again for you before you begin.
Belief Change Pattern
A. Information gathering and preparation
1. Belief: "Think of a belief you have about yourself that you wish you didn't have, because it limits you in some way, or has undesirable consequences. How do you represent this belief in your internal experience?"
2. Doubt: "Now think of something that you doubt. It might be true or might not be: you're not sure. How do you represent this doubt in your internal experience?"
When you ask your partner to think of something she doubts, make sure it's something she's unsure of. If she says something like, "I doubt that's a good idea," what she may really mean is that she believes it's not a good idea. Doubt is when you waver from thinking something might be true to thinking it might not be true; you just don't know.
3. Differences: Do a contrastive analysis to find and list the submodality differences between Belief and Doubt, just as you did before with confusion and understanding.
4. Testing: Test each submodality on your list of differences one at a time to find out which ones are the most powerful in changing belief to doubt. After testing one submodality, change it back to the way it was originally before testing the next one.
5. New Belief: "What new belief would you like to have in place of the belief that you now have and don't like?" Be sure this belief is stated in positive terms, without negations. "I can learn to change in response to feedback," rather than "I won't be unable to change what I do."
Also be sure that your partner thinks of the new belief in terms of an ability or a process, rather than having already achieved a desired goal. "I believe that I can learn to change and maintain my weight" is a useful belief. "I weigh 107 pounds" is not a very useful belief, especially if she actually weighs 350 pounds! We want to mobilize new abilities, not install new delusions.
You also need to ask the person to check for ecology: "If you have this new belief, how could it cause you problems?" "How will your husband or your family respond to you differently if you have this new belief?" "How will this new belief affect your work?" etc. Modify the new belief to take into account any possible difficulties.
Your partner doesn't have to tell you what the new belief is. All you need is a word to identify this new content.
B. Belief Change Process
6. Belief to Doubt: Keeping the content the same, change the unwanted belief to doubt by using one or more of the most powerful submodalities you discovered in step 4. For instance, if the two most powerful differences were movie to slide, and close panorama to distant framed picture, have the panoramic movie slow to a still slide as it moves away and becomes a framed picture.
7. Change Content: Using some other submodality, change the content from the old unwanted belief to the new desired belief. Use something she already does, or any gradual analogue method. For example, if she flips pictures back and forth in doubt, she can flip from the old content to the new content. You could have the old belief picture go off into the distance so far that it's impossible to tell what it is, then have it come back with the new belief image. You can have the picture get so bright or so dim that the old content disappears, and then have it come back with the new content, etc.
8. Doubt to Belief: Keeping the new content, change doubt to belief by reversing the same submodality changes you used in Step 6. If shifting location to the right changed the old belief to doubt, you now shift location back to the left to change the new content from doubt to belief. As you do this, be very alert for any "resistance," or difficulty that your partner has. If the new belief is stated poorly, or has any negations in it, some part of the person may object to it. When you encounter objections, honor them, gather information, and back up to step 5 to redefine the new belief.
C. Testing
9. There are several ways to test. You can ask "How do you think about this new belief?" Ask for information about submodalites, and use nonverbal behavior to confirm (or disconfirm) the verbal report.
10. When the new belief is in place, the old belief will probably change to the submodalities of disbelief. If you find out how the old belief is represented now, you can compare that with the submodalities of doubt, which you already know, or with the submodalities of disbelief, which you can find out by asking the person to think of something else she firmly disbelieves.